
Several Twilight Zone episodes deal with nostalgia and the desire to return to one's youth. Scientists today are working on making "invisibility cloaks" that obscure objects by bending light waves around them, while 3D printing technology is becoming cheaper and more mainstream. The 1963 episode "Valley of the Shadow," for example, features a device that manipulates atoms to make objects disappear or appear.
#The twilight zone the fear series
More than 50 years since it first aired, re-watching the series reveals that many of the technologies and ideas it imagined as supernatural in the 1960s are commonplace or at least conceivable today-including driverless cars, flat-screen televisions, human-like robotics, government surveillance, and more. Yet now that we're well into the “next century” that was so distant to Serling, some of The Twilight Zone's more fantastical ideas and inventions have emerged in real life. I like to know what happens Thursday, not in the next century." The hardware that I use, I think, should be identifiable. Here's how he explained this idea in a 1970 interview: "I would probably shy away from the year 2500. Serling's outlook also meant he was more interested in imagining the world as it might actually become. “If you can’t believe the unbelievability, then there’s something wrong in the writing,” he told a college class in 1975.

Twilight Zone creator Rod Serling said that even in science fiction, he was most compelled by stories that were relatable first in human terms. The Twilight Zone is at its core an exploration of the human condition and commentary on how people cope with fear of the unknown. Atomic war, space exploration, government control, anxiety, and mortality are all common Twilight Zone themes.īut the series has endured for more than half a century because of how resonant it remains today. The series is celebrated as an acute reflection of a rare and intense moment in American history a space-age cult classic that captured the messy transition between post-World War II America and the chaotic 1960s. 31 at 8 a.m.Ĭritics tend to talk about The Twilight Zone like it’s trapped in amber. The Syfy network will continue the tradition for a 19th time this week, airing more than 80 episodes in 48 hours starting the morning of Dec. Though its original run spanned five seasons between 19, generations of new viewers have since discovered The Twilight Zone, its longevity at least partly buoyed by an annual marathon broadcast each New Year's dating back to 1994.

Incidentally, composer Marius Constant dashed off the 30-second theme song in a single afternoon, according to The New York Times-but that melody has endured in our popular imagination just as the program has. More than half a century after it first aired, The Twilight Zone still has one of the most recognizable opening themes in television history: Doo-doo-doo-doo, doo-doo-doo-doo, doo-doo-doo-doo.
